Apacer Showcases in AGE for Two Consecutive Years and Leading the Gaming Storage Market

Aug 13, 2018

Apacer Reaps the Seeds Sowed in Vertical Application

Showcasing in AGE for Two Consecutive Years and Leading the Gaming Storage Market

Apacer, the global leader in industrial storage and memory, has been dedicated to the gaming vertical application market for many years. Recently, with its rich industry experience and excellent customization capabilities, Apacer has successfully expanded its overseas market joining tier-one customer supply chain. Continuing such momentum, Apacer will once again participate in the Australasian Gaming Expo (AGE) held in Sydney from August 14th to 16th, showcasing the most comprehensive industrial-grade storage and memory solution in response to the importance of data integrity and reliability for gaming applications.

The "Richness" of the Information Makes Gaming Profitable with a High Threshold

According to the global gambling consultant GBGC Global Gambling Report, the total market value of the global gaming industry grew at a rate of 6% in 2017, reaching a market size of 464 billion. It is expected that the total market value will exceed 500 billion US dollars by 2021. Even Japan has passed the casino act specifying integrated resort areas, showing the government's optimism towards the business opportunities within the industry. Apacer's industrial storage and memory products have recently successfully entered the global tier-one customer supply chain of the gaming industry. In addition to the products' high reliability and Fixed B.O.M., stable product supply and other advantages, Apacer prevails by focusing on the technical aspects. As pointed out by Cindy Huang, Director of Apacer Vertical Market Application Business Division, while it is all about data storage and processing, the characteristics of data storage applied in national defense differ greatly from that used in gaming machine. The key to mastering the needs of different vertical application markets and proposing corresponding solutions requires a wealth of industry experience and even more so a very high level of customization capacity.

Gaming machine is one of the biggest applications of the gaming industry but it demands high customization capacity and the entry threshold is even higher. First of all, due to the high degree of regulation by the government or the competent authorities, products launch requires stringent and long-term certification and testing processes. Any slight changes must be re-certified. The fact that the machines should run all year round nonstop is a test of product reliability. More importantly, data storage of the gaming machine is highly correlated with the fairness of the game. It is often connected with the operator's financial flow or financial system. In view of such, the key to gaming application lies in ensuring the integrity of the stored data and preventing it from being arbitrarily invaded or tampered with.

Apacer's industrial-grade solid-state drive (SSD) provides multiple protections for the data integrity and reliability that gaming application values the most. In addition to using End-to-End Data Protection which instantly detects and corrects error data to ensure the integrity and correctness of data transmission between the host and the NAND storage domain, Apacer also deploys Write Protect in the form of hardware and firmware commands to prevent unauthorized data from being written into the hard drive. Moreover, Apacer also designs customized S/N codes, so that the data stored in the SSD can be tracked, avoiding data misplacement of the gaming machine and improving data security.

Meanwhile, noticing the intensive reading and writing features of the small data in gaming application, Apacer has adopted OP (Over-Provisioning) technology to optimize SSD sequential random write performance and maintain good health of SSD, and applied Auto Read Refresh to avoid read disturbs affecting data reliability by moving data dynamically. Apacer's exclusive development of CoreLife to optimize firmware allows more effective use of block space, reduce Write Amplification, and extend the lifespan of SSD by up to 8 times, greatly improving product durability.

AGE (Australasian Gaming Expo) is one of the largest professional gaming exhibitions in the world. Exhibitors include the world's top-tier SI manufacturers. Apacer has been exhibiting its latest technology applications at every one of the latest technology expos, demonstrating its commitment to joining the gaming industry. As the new generation of gaming machines increasingly focus on the richness of image, Apacer will also showcase the latest 3D NAND flash memory and PCIe SSD solutions in response to the future high-resolution image processing needs, spearheading the global gaming storage market.